Milestones this Week: Personal and Otherwise

It was a busy week on many fronts for me and some significant happenings on the part of the City as well. Here is a quick summary of the happenings:

• I'll be starting Karaoke at Club A. J.'s on South J. Street (east side, behind L'Anjou) next Wednesday night from 9 p.m. until 12 a.m. The deal was sealed this week. And NEWSFLASH - I will no longer be at the Mad Hatter doing Karaoke. Come by and see me at Club A.J.s - we will have a lot of fun!
• Monday night I was the guest of Drew Martin on the Martin Hour. This was streamed from the newly re-vamped Lake Worth Talk.com studios. (Great work Jim!) We talked/debated the positives and negatives of the Hometown Democracy initiative. I hope you had a chance to hear it. From the reviews I have heard, people thought it was informative and thought that it was great that a civil discussion could take place on the topic.
• I registered on the Lake Worth Media discussion board and will be posting under the name "TruthMatters", when and if the urge comes over me.
• Last night, I ended up visiting TooJay's for a sandwich and bumped into NOW (National Organization for Women) member Justine Postal. She is the one that did the endorsement interviews for the last election cycle. It was good to see her again. Then, at the next booth, Trip Cioci and Jennifer Marcel were both enjoying dinner. Both are very active in the Lake Osborne neighborhood.
• We found out that the City has $4 million parked in a fund that has been temporarily shut down by the State of Florida. It seems that some government agencies have used the fund as an interest bearing account to store funds before they are utilized. Some agencies became concerned about the quality of the fund since it consists mainly of mortgage-backed securities. Some rather large units of government were closing out their accounts, thus prompting the hold being placed on the fund. One can only hope that the 10% of the City's total budget is safe and will remain whole!
• Finally, through reports in the local press, it seems that County Commissioner Mary McCarty "went off" on Lake Worth. Her outburst revolved around the negotiations between the City and the County taking over our Fire Department and the increased cost that it would mean for the County (even though no one knows the final figures). She actually said something to the effect of "Let Lake Worth burn." - which prompted a response from Mayor Clemens, essentially asking for an apology. In his e-mail to Mary McMarty, he referred to "my city and my citizens". Jeff, you're a great guy, but I do not consider myself one of "your" citizens - fellow citizen, yes. Let's try to assert the city's goals and objectives here and not make this some sort of a personal confrontation between elected officials.